New build- artifacts everywhere

[animesensei]

I just assembled my computer and turned it on and I see white artifacts everywhere going in rows of top left to bottom right diagonal lines with smaller green and blue flashing dots inside the white blocky artifacts. It's there during the BIOS booting and when I went to start installing the OS, it was there as well.

I want to know if this is a driver or hardware issue? Is it worth my time trying to figure out what it being displayed with the artifacting until I can connect to the net and download new drivers or is the video card defective?

This computer has been a pain, I RMA'd the video card once already as it was DOA. I don't want to pay to ship it back to MSI again if I can help it. Everything is new, or in the case of the video card, probably refurbished.

Specs:

-BIOSTAR TH55B HD LGA 1156 Intel H55 HDMI Micro ATX Intel Motherboard59177059
-Intel Core i5 I5-750 2.66 GHz Processor
-MSI R4870-T2D1G ATI 1GB GDDR5 PCI Express Video Card HD
-OCZ Gold 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
-OCZ ModXStream Pro OCZ600MXSP 600W ATX12V V2.2 / EPS12V SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply
-Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31500341AS 1.5TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive
-Monitor is an older CRT monitor plugged in with a DVI to CRT adapter and the monitor works fine when plugged in to the video out on my laptop

No OS installed yet and everything is at the factory settings.

Thank you.

 

[Herskovits]

I just assembled my computer and turned it on and I see white artifacts everywhere going in rows of top left to bottom right diagonal lines with smaller green and blue flashing dots inside the white blocky artifacts.

When you see blocky artifacts like that appearing on the screen, it usually indicates a video card with bad video RAM --a defective card. It's probably that simple.

However, first I would reseat the card in the slot. Make sure all the pins are making good contact --scrape it around a little --and make sure the card is seated all the way down in the slot. This is even more important if it felt like video card (or motherboard) wasn't lining up properly in the case, and you had trouble putting it in. (If the case is putting torque on the video card, you might want to loosen the motherboard and reposition it.)

In terms of pure troubleshooting, it would also be useful to try that video card in another computer --and try a different monitor. Also, do you have yet another video card you can try --any other video card?

Do you have the latest version BIOS code installed on that motherboard? (Considering the motherboard has onboard video capabilities, and that's the second video card you tried, it's conceivably some kind of conflict.)

If you reseat the video card, and it still doesn't work. You update the BIOS, and it still doesn't work. And you try it with video card #3 and it still doesn't work, I would be inclined to replace the motherboard.